Writing became a therapy. First of all, it meant I was reconstructing my own existence. It was also an act of defiance. I wasn’t supposed to write. ... I evolved all kinds of mental exercises, even went back to those subjects which I said I hated in school, in particular mathematics. ... You know, anything to keep the mind alive.
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Wole Soyinka
Playwright, poet and novelist; Nobel laureate in Literature, 1986
Nigeria · b. 1934
Arts and letters
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Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian playwright, poet and essayist and the first African writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded in 1986. He was imprisoned for twenty-two months, much of it in solitary confinement, during the Nigerian civil war.
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